"NATASHA" - work in progress

                                         
"Natasha", 16x12, oil on linen, work in progress

                                       
"Natasha", 16x12, oil on linen, work in progress
                                         

"Natasha" - detail

I'd like you to meet Natasha. Natasha is the lovely friend of my daughter Danica, who has graciously agreed to sit for me in my studio one day a week for the past number of weeks. In addition to being a beautiful model, Natasha is great company.

Figurative painting has been a passion for me since I was a little girl drawing all the important people in my life. While I've managed to paint a few portraits and figures each year, in the last few years I've decided to get more serious about it. Since I paint from life, it can sometimes be a bit problematic finding someone willing to sit for me for the hours required to complete a painting. (I have many unfinished paintings in my studio, as a result.) In addition, being so accustomed to painting from life I've found that when using a photo I'm unhappy with the results.

This painting was done from a photo taken of Natasha during a life session and supported by numerous painted studies. I began this small painting with the idea of doing a 1/2 hour quick study from the photo, wiping it clean and beginning again with the same idea. My friend, artist Liz Wiltzen, encouraged me to try this, in order to approach painting from the photo as if I was painting from life. Liz has lots of great ideas and this sounded like a winner.

This particular morning saw me at my studio with this idea in mind. I grabbed a fresh canvas - untoned, gave it a quick wash of burnt umber and ultramarine blue, barely discernible from the photo, and enthusiastically began. Well, I must confess, 1/2 hour turned into an hour and pretty soon into an hour and I was having so much fun that before I knew it, I'd devoted the whole day to this painting. As I told Liz later, it was just too much fun to wipe off as suddenly it felt like I wasn't using a photograph at all. Mission accomplished!

In addition to working from the photo with hopeful results, I was able to paint 'alla prima', attempting to finish things as I went (Alla prima comes from Italian, literally meaning "at once".)

So, the moral of the story is...paint from a photo as if you're painting from life - with gusto, and follow Liz' exercise advice.

Natasha and others will continue to sit for me each week. Truly, painting from life is where progress and growth lies - and that's all that truly matters.

This painting is now complete and I will post a photo of the completed painting in a few days.

Reach Out and Touch Someone...

The life of an artist can be a fairly solitary one, often by choice as well as necessity. Many hours are spent alone in the studio in the pursuit of knowledge, challenge and the hard work of painting.

However, artists tend to be very good at networking. As a result of my website, blogs, and newsletter, I've come to know and share with artists from many parts of the world. The contact is more often than not a single email with an enquiring artist; but sometimes it's a timely note of support.

Messages can be brief...welcome words of encouragement or notes sharing methods and ideas about the business side of this life. It's all good, in the spirit of friendship, and it makes life as an artist fun, fulfilling and much less isolated.

But it hasn't always been this way.Recently, I reflected on the incredible resources available to today's artist and I realized how decidedly different and complex my life as a working artist has become over the years.

It's barely conceiveable that just a dozen years ago, I couldn't turn on a computer myself, much less operate one, unless one of my children was at home. Today, I have a lovely website and several blogs, all of which I have learned to navigate myself. How did I ever manage all those years ago without these tools?

Looking back to those early years of my two decade plus career, my life as an artist was very simple. It was a world without internet, so unlike this instant world which now lies at our fingertips. But artists have always been networking naturals. It's part of our enquiring, resourceful pyche to seek out like-minded artists, to compare notes on methods and techniques; to search out the workshop of our dreams or the gallery which will become a home to our life's work; to savour words written on a favourite artist's blog or newsletter; to explore what other artists are creating, and more importantly, how they're doing it. The world has very definitely become our oyster.

And so today, while my studio days are still solitary, it is never with feelings of isolation that I view my world. As I prepare my canvases by hand and joyfully put pieces of paint on these surfaces, I remember the artists who have so generously passed along their hard-won knowledge over these wonderful years.


Friendship is merely an email away; companionship an inbox waiting to be opened. Sometimes it's even a surprise in my 'real' mailbox...a Christmas package, filled with incredibly delicious home-made Italian cookies from my Italian artist friend in Omaha.